Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan (Quotes)

I don’t really understand the point of crying. Also, I feel that crying is almost—like, aside from deaths of relatives or whatever—totally avoidable if you follow two very simple rules: 1. Don’t care too much. 2. Shut up.

I know part of knowing someone is being mean to them or whatever.

Shutting up works. Following the rules works. So I shut up, and I don’t care, and I keep walking, and soon it’s over.

Well, I listen to my parents. They know what’s good for me. I’ll listen to anyone, frankly. Almost everyone knows better than I do.

I want her. I don’t. Maybe I am a robot after all. I have no idea what to say, so I go ahead and say the worst possible thing. “Very cute.”

god, you’re one nasty fucker.

now, if there’s anything stupider than buddy lists, it’s lol. if anyone ever uses lol with me, i rip my computer right out of the wall and smash it over the nearest head. i mean, it’s not like anyone is laughing out loud about the things they lol. i think it should be spelled loll, like what a lobotomized person’s tongue does. loll. loll. i can’t think any more. loll. loll!

everyone in our school has afterschool activities. mine is going home.

at some point last year, her gloom met my doom and she thought it was a good match. i’m not so sure, but at least i get coffee out of it.

i just want to say, ‘i feel sorry for you, really i do.’ but that might start a conversation, and a conversation might start a fight, and then i’d feel so guilty i might have to move away to portland or something. i need coffee.

i do not say ‘good-bye.’ i believe that’s one of the bullshittiest words ever invented. it’s not like you’re given the choice to say ‘bad-bye’ or ‘awful-bye’ or ‘couldn’t-careless-about-you-bye. ’ every time you leave, it’s supposed to be a good one. well, i don’t believe in that. i believe against that.

i am constantly torn between killing myself and killing everyone around me. those seem to be the two choices. everything else is just killing time.

it is only my respect for your parents that will prevent me from murdering you outright.

Love and truth being tied together, I mean. They make each other possible, you know?

I like you. And I didn’t know whether I liked you until I thought of you at that concert with some other guy, but now I do know, and I realize that makes me a bitchsquealer, but yeah, I like you. I think you’re great, and very cute—and by cute I mean beautiful but don’t want to say beautiful because it’s cliché but you are—and I don’t even mind that you’re a music snob.

I fucking hate guys who quote poetry to girls. Since we are being honest. Also, wisdom is a better fate than the vastmajority of kisses. Wisdom is certainly a better fate than kissing douches who only read poetry so

they can use it to get in girls’ pants.

Typical boy—you’re interested as long as she isn’t.

“I don’t have a bad attitude—”
“—is the kind of thing that people with bad attitudes say.”

i am just going to pretend that she doesn’t exist. because all the other options would get me
expelled and/or arrested.

when things break, it’s not the actual breaking that prevents them from getting back together again.
it’s because a little piece gets lost - the two remaining ends couldn’t fit together even if they wanted
to. the whole shape has changed.

maybe our friendship wasn’t meant to last longer than a year. maybe the things that drew

us together - doom, gloom, sarcasm - weren’t meant to hold us together.

we would have been better off if we’d never been friends in the first place. i’m not going to try to punish

her - i’m not going to tell everyone what she did, or bomb her locker, or yell at her in front of

everyone else. i just want her to go away. that’s all. the end.

mom: how’s it going?

me: fine.

and it’s true, for once.

Not that smart. Not that hot. Not that nice. Not that funny. That’s me: I’m not that.

I think about how much depends upon a best friend. When you wake up in the morning you swing

your legs out of bed and you put your feet on the ground and you stand up. You don’t scoot to the edge

of the bed and look down to make sure the floor is there. The floor is always there. Until it’s not.

It seems to me that all the things we keep in sealed boxes are both alive and dead until we open the box, that the unobserved is both there and not. 

still, what could i say? that i didn’t just feel depressed - instead, it was like the depression was the core of me, of every part of me, from my mind to my bones? that if he got blue, i got black?

He acts like he doesn’t care, but he’s closer to falling apart than anyone else in the whole freaking play.

The things he says aren’t annoying; it’s the way he says them

I’m waiting for him. To come out and apologize. Or else to come out and yell at me for being a pussy.

I know it’s immature, but I don’t care. Sometimes you need your best friend to walk through the doors. And then, he doesn’t.

It wouldn’t hurt if he weren’t right—if I hadn’t known somewhere that my weakness aggravates him.

And maybe he thinks like I do, that you don’t pick your friends, and he’s stuck with this annoying

bitchsquealer who can’t handle himself, who can’t close his glove around the ball, who can’t take a

dressing-down from the coach, who regrets writing letters to the editor in defense of his best friend.

i don’t want to be thin or conventionally beautiful or straight or brilliant. no, what i really want - and what i never get - is to be appreciated.

do you know what it’s like to work so hard to make sure everyone’s

happy, and to have not a single person recognize it?

there’s a difference - i see it, but i am

worried that i am the only frickin’ one who sees it.

because every morning when i wake up, i have to

convince myself that, yes, by the end of the day, i will be able to do something good. that’s all

i ask - to be able to do something good. not for myself, you whiny shithead bastard complainer

who, incidentally, i really, really like.

minutes have to pass before i can admit that, yes, even though i tell myself i’m feeling nothing, it’s

a lie. i want to say i’m feeling remorse or regret or even guilt. but none of those words seem like

enough. what i’m feeling is shame. raw, loathing shame.

i am awful.

i am heartless.

i am scared that these things are actually true.

need is never a good basis for any relationship. it has to be much more than that.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but

everything goes better for you when you talk to people.

I just think if you don’t say the honest thing,

sometimes the honest thing never becomes true, you know.

there’s something a little Drama Queeny about your anti-Drama Queenyness

I mean, who you want to screw and whether you screw them? Those are important

questions, I guess. But they’re not that important. You know what’s important? Who would you die

for? Who do you wake up at five forty-five in the morning for even though you don’t even know why

he needs you? Whose drunken nose would you pick?!

When you date someone, you have the markers along the way, right: You kiss, you have The Talk,

you say the Three Little Words, you sit on a swing set and break up. You can plot the points on a

graph. And you check up with each other along the way: Can I do this? If I say this, will you say it

back? But with friendship, there’s nothing like that. Being in a relationship, that’s something you choose.

Being friends, that’s just something you are.

Fuck it, I do pick you. I want you to come over to my house in twenty years with your dude and your adopted kids and I want our fucking kids to hang out and I want to, like, drink wine and talk about the Middle East or whatever the fuck we’re gonna want to do when we’re old. We’ve been friends too long to pick, but if we could pick, I’d pick you.

on the other side of the

silence. you’d think that silence would be peaceful. but really, it’s painful.

i just wish it wasn’t all trial and error.

because that’s what it is, isn’t it?

trial and error.

i guess there’s a reason they don’t call it ‘trial and success’

it’s just try-error

try-error

try-error

weltschmerz. it’s the depression you feel when the world as it is does not line up with the world as you think it should be. i live in a big goddamned weltzschermz ocean, you know? and so do you. and so

does everyone. because everyone thinks it should be possible just to keep falling and falling

forever, to feel the rush of the air on your face as you fall, that air pulling your face into a

brilliant goddamned smile. and that should be possible. you should be able to fall forever.